


He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha

by Anonymous



Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Animal Death, Bestiality, Community: makinghugospin, Death By Horse Cock, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-03 17:36:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Javert finds the strengths he values most not in his fellow man, but in his horses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 2 contains character death.
> 
>  
> 
> [On the kink meme.](http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/11667.html?thread=2446739#t2446739)

1\. Grey

The move from Toulon to Paris, the next step up in the world, comes with - among other things - the pick of a horse and further instruction on riding it.

"You'll find it's different here," Inspector Martin tells him with the artful carelessness of one who wishes to sound more experienced than he is. They are taking a fiacre into the outskirts of the city, owing to Javert's lack of mount, and Martin is taking up more than his fair share of the foot room. But no matter his puffed-up air, he has been at work more than a handful of days and so he undoubtedly has superiority.

"Yes," Martin goes on. "In the bagne you have chains and all that to do your work for you. There your criminals are already collared ahead of time."

He pauses significantly, obviously waiting for Javert to agree. Javert looks at him, at his perfectly-trimmed beard, his neat, precise uniform with its epaulets, the spit polish of his boots. He is a fine, imposing figure of a policeman; he does not look like he would last an instant in an uprising or the chaos of an escape attempt. "Yes," Javert says. "Of course."

"Hmm. Well. In Paris you'll need a horse. The size and the muscle, you know - the scum find it harder to stand up to a mounted man. Not to mention the speed, should you let one slip away..."

Javert's hand tightens on the edge of the bench he sits on, his knuckles whitening. But there is no way Martin could know that 24601 had - as Javert had predicted, though no one had listened to his warnings - skipped parole; and besides, there is no reason why he should care. So far from Toulon, with all the criminal business of Paris to occupy them, there is _no one_ else who knows or cares. The escape from justice of a single convict, no matter how dangerous and monstrous the man, is a private thorn in Javert's heart.

"I can see the advantages, Inspector," he says.

"No need to be so formal, Javert."

"As you say."

The rest of the journey passes in silence, though Martin's supercilious amusement is almost tangible. Before long the coach draws up; the stench of horse and dung overwhelms the smell of the city. Martin gets out and Javert follows, glancing about himself. The yard is filthy, but he has seen and smelled far worse; if Martin expects him to quail at it, he will be disappointed.

They go together to the stables; just as they enter there is a view of the wide, muddy paddock behind. A small herd wanders loose, most pawing at the ground after any hint of grass, some standing listless and half-asleep. One, smaller than the rest, is galloping wide loops, tail flagged, ears pricked, and Javert pauses with the door still open to watch it. He can't tell from this distance if its color is dark by nature or by mud.

"What are you waiting for?" Martin says, and comes back out to follow Javert's eyes to the frolicking horse.

"With fierceness and rage he swallows the ground," Javert quotes.

"More likely a bee stung him," Martin says. "Colts will get into anything."

They go in.

The horses that line the full stalls all seem equally suited; equally dull. Martin inspects their mouths, pulling lips away from browned teeth, lifting hooves here and there. Javert attends: whether or not he likes Martin is immaterial; the man evidently knows his way around beasts, and Javert must learn where he can. Still, after Martin rejects the fifth horse they look at as being only suited to the Army ("Frog too soft, damned thrush - teeth too worn - cannon fodder!") his mind wanders slightly, straying outside. He suspects the one lively horse in the lot is impractical; at the least there's little point in a mounted officer whose mount is too much for him.

"Here," Martin says at last, slapping the horse he's been checking over on the shoulder and whistling as a stableboy wanders past in a lazy stupor. "You there, find us some tack."

The horse is - it is a horse. A spotty-looking mare the color of ill-washed laundry with a broad, incurious face and dark eyes, but sound of wind and tooth and bone, or so Martin swears. Her name turns out to be, rather unoriginally, Grey.

Martin borrows another horse; they leave mounted, and Javert finds the ride goes quite easily. Grey is as steady beneath him as the bench of the fiacre had been and he reluctantly admits that Martin had picked well; this is a horse that will serve him well. There is no fire in her, only a slow steady strength, but she follows orders unquestioningly and does not shy at the report of guns or at the charge of desperate men.

Between Grey and Martin, Javert is soon riding as well as anyone else; better, perhaps, than most. He could not say which of the two is the better teacher, but to be certain he enjoys the company of the mare more than that of the man. Soon, more and more of his wages are slipping towards the purchase of bruised apples and thin, scrawny carrots, and Grey grows almost affectionate in her slow, patient way; she lips his offerings gently from his hands, and while she does not go so far to nicker when she sees him, she seems happy enough.

And Javert, too, finds himself, if not _happy_ , at least satisfied. She will never be a beauty - there's too much plow horse of no particular provenance in her for that, her mane is thin, her fur coarse - but he grooms her himself anyway when there's time to spare from their work. She leans into the long strokes of his brush; he talks to her of the things they have done and the things they will do. On Sundays he quotes Scripture to her; she listens with the same placid acceptance she does at all other times and no lightning-bolts come to strike him out of the blue.

In early spring, on one of his rare free days, they ride out of the city, far enough out that she can find some fresh, untrodden grass: a rare treat in Paris, but free here in the countryside. He unsaddles her as she eats, brushing off the light sweat from the ride, then turns to the currycomb to pull off as much of the winter's coat off her as he can. It comes off in great white tufts, scattering across the grass like the snow that has just melted. When as much of it is gone as he can manage, he drops the comb to the ground and leans against her broad, warm shoulder as she continues to graze. _A company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots_ , Javert thinks but does not quite dare to say aloud and closes his eyes, letting her hold him up.

She takes colic and dies as summer comes. There is nothing he can do.

 

2\. Charlotte

If there is a tightness to his mouth that summer, many of the others understand; horses are not so invulnerable as they seem and most of them have lost mounts to injury or illness. Javert takes it harder than most, they say to each other, and it raises his esteem in the eyes of his superiors that he is so exacting with the law and yet not cruel and unfeeling.

Javert does not notice. He walks his beat on foot for a week or two and tells himself it is for the different perspective it can give him into the streets; it is certainly not a mourning. She had been only a horse.

Before walking can become a habit, he returns to the stables. As he enters, he glances out into the paddock again, the vague memory of a running horse flickering in his mind. The sun is beating down brightly and all the horses turned out have gathered under a few dead trees for what shade they can find; nothing moves but the flies.

When he leaves again he is mounted on a young sorrel mare who had stuck her head out of the bars of her stall and nosed at his elbow as he had gone past. She does not have Grey's bulk or sheer strength; her bones are finer, and Javert (though still no expert) thinks there might be thoroughbred stock in her - maybe even a drop of Arabian.

She's called Charlotte, which he finds a little awkward: before when he had occasionally needed to speak before of his horse by name, everyone had understood at once that he had been speaking of a beast. Now - if he were to speak of _Charlotte_ in the same way, embarrassing misunderstandings seem almost inevitable.

He can't quite bring himself to change her name; it suits her. She dances along as they ride back, head high and her feet picking up in almost more of a prance than a trot. It seems to him as if he has lost a Grey and found a grisette.

The thought - the memory - should hurt more than it does.

 

To stave off misunderstanding he calls her only the horse in public; when they are alone he calls her by name, and the strange exclusivity of it makes it sound almost an endearment. The walls Javert had shored up after Grey's sudden death quickly crumble under her flashy affection, the flirtatious toss of her mane and cheerful nickering.

He brushes her to burnished copper, keeps her hooves oiled, her mane and tail smooth and untangled, and though he does not know it they cut a fine and intimidating figure together. Crime on his patrol drops as the criminals find somewhere else to be and more admiring notations are made in his file.

When spring comes again, Javert again rides out of the city, seeking a quiet spot to graze his horse. Really, he should have known better: the minute he finds a likely-looking meadow and unsaddles her, she's off, bounding playfully away like a foal instead of paying the least attention to the rich grass. She stops and looks back, as if daring him to chase her. There is no one about. He does.

Charlotte lets him catch her, eventually, after nearly half an hour, when he's panting from the effort. Despite the cool weather, he's hot enough that he strips out of his greatcoat and tosses it over her back. She cranes her head to look at it curiously, then turns back to him and nuzzles at him, searching for apples.

The apples are in the pockets of the coat, as they always are; without it on her nose skates across his hips alarmingly.

"Whoa," Javert says, startled, and her ears swivel up at him curiously. If she could speak, no doubt she would say: we are already stopped, what are you saying whoa for?

She can't, of course, and after he doesn't say anything more sensible she returns to snuffling about for treats. Her nose presses against his thigh and shifts upwards. He chokes and backs away quickly, staving her off with a hand on her forehead as she tries to follow. Before she can start at him again he leans into her chest, reaches around her side and fumbles an apple out of the coat still draped over her.

She crunches it up delightedly as he slumps against her chest. He is still hard; it has been a long time, perhaps weeks, since he last brought himself off, and the sudden soft touch had been too much. When she is finished, she looks back at him again and whuffles in his ear, a velvet touch ghosting unbearably over his neck.

He checks that they are still alone, retrieves his coat, tosses the last apple far afield, and kneels down to take himself in hand as she gallops away to search the meadow for it. He means to think of the whores he rides among every day, or the grisettes and varied mistresses of the slightly more well-off quarters he does not visit; he means to imagine perfume or flowers or whatever comes along with them. But his coat smells like hay and apples and when he spends over the ground with a shocking jolt of pleasure it is with his horse's name in his mouth.

 

3\. Gymont

He and Charlotte have two years.

At the end of that time he loses her not to death, but back to the stables: they want her as a brood mare, and he of course cannot say no, as she belongs to the state and not to him. She will breed fine foals, no doubt, he says.

That night he dreams of some unnamed, half-imagined dark stallion covering her. He dreams of her bright tail held aside for her suitor, the thick musky smell of her heat and the tooth-baring curl of his lip; of the screaming squeals as they come crashing together and the stallion's huge prick slides effortlessly in, rutting into her in strokes so powerful she nearly falls. When Javert wakes he is still shaking with the force of his orgasm, the blankets pushed from his body and his come spilled in hot pools over his belly.

Javert is late getting to the stables. Perhaps because of that, he's left cooling his heels outside the stablemaster's dingy office, waiting to sign the required exchange of papers at the man's leisure. While he waits, he watches the boys bring the horses in from paddock to stall. It seems callous, almost, to think of his next horse before he has even put ink to paper, but what can he do? It is the system. He must have a horse.

The horse that catches his eye this time is somehow familiar, though Javert is not sure how; perhaps he's seen the beast before, being ridden by some guardsman or perhaps another inspector. He is tall - taller than either of Javert's previous mounts, with muscles like a warhorse and the hint of Charlotte's fiery grace in his abrupt movements. In the shadows of the barn he is an indistinguishable dark color, like a shadow himself, and the weight of Javert's dream suddenly presses heavily on him.

He reaches out, stops the stableboy with a touch to his shoulder before he can lead the horse away. "Where are you taking him?"

"Sorry?" the boy says, and peers up at him. "Monsieur Inspector. Just outside."

Javert had passed Martin in the stableyard on the way in. The thought of that man on this horse - and he has no doubt Martin will snatch him up if he sees him - is intolerable. "Leave him," he says. "What's his name?"

"Gymont."

It is a good name: not too bestial nor too human. Javert likes it as immediately as he had liked the horse himself.

 

He does not lose Gymont.

The stallion is with him when Javert's unexpected transfer comes in and sends him off to Montreuil-sur-Mer at the head of a troop of his own; the stallion is with him while Javert is hoodwinked by a criminal and when Valjean reveals himself. He does not laugh at Javert behind his back, as Javert is sorely sure, on his return to Paris, that all the others do.

He does not judge or condemn; Javert can do that well enough on his own. He is simply there, a steady, unshifting support when the world seems damned and determined to crumble beneath Javert's feet, and Javert leans on him perhaps all the more heavily for it. Gymont bears up with pride and without complaint, just as Javert strives to.

 

Neither do the dreams leave him, although as the years pass it is the mare that fades in his mind to a chestnut blur, the stallion brightening and solidifying to glossy dark bay. Javert is not sure what this means; he thinks about it sometimes in his bed at night and is not surprised at his own depravity when even the waking thought of Gymont mounting a mare makes his own cock stiffen.

When one night he dreams that he _is_ the sorrel mare, that Gymont's bared teeth are clenched in his neck and his huge prick thrusting deep into him as he struggles to brace himself upright, he wakes before it is too late, panting and clutching at his bedding to keep his hands from his desperate cock. It is an abomination, this thing he dreams of, not a casual touch or a glance that lingers too long on mating beasts - it is against the law - it is -

He buries his face in the pillow to muffle the noises he is making. His hips shudder forwards against the bed (his hips lift up, presenting himself) and it is too much for a man to bear.

Gymont does not judge him.

They ride out in the spring as they always have done; Javert's guilt is black and heavy as iron shackles, but Gymont carries the extra weight easily. When he unsaddles Gymont and slips his bridle off, the stallion neither grazes nor runs off but stands as steadily at his side as if Javert had not untacked him, as if even in freedom he awaits Javert's command.

"You should not follow me so," Javert tells him, half wishing Gymont _would_ run instead of standing steadfast and ready; save himself instead of saving Javert. The strange lust is in him like molten iron, burning him, ruining him, and what kind of man wishes to be a mare to his own horse? What kind of man is Javert?

He cannot actually do it; even if the law did not forbid it, even if God did not forbid it, in waking life he is no mare and he is sure the stallion's cock would tear him apart. But he must do _something_ or else die from the need of it.

Javert runs his hand along Gymont's flank, rests his head against his croup. Slowly, his hand falls down, along the breadth of his barrel; Gymont shivers, as if shaking off a fly, and then Javert's fingertips brush his sheath.

He had not quite given thought to how to do this - could not have permitted himself while he was level-headed and not half-dead with lust - and at first it is awkward and Javert fumbles like a virgin. It takes perhaps a minute of stroking before Gymont's cock begins to harden, sliding from the sheath beneath Javert's fingers as he continues to stroke and fondle at it. Javert presses his face harder against Gymont's hide so that he will not be tempted to look - and he does not, for all of a few seconds longer.

Gymont's cock is thick, _huge_ \- the head almost like a fist - and Javert's breath hisses through his teeth as he watches it grow even larger. He shifts his hand up and touches the warm, dry skin as gently as he can, and Gymont makes a strange whickering noise, tossing his head and shuddering again.

Javert licks his palm (he cannot taste anything but oh God, what he is doing) and replaces his hand; this time Gymont thrusts into his hand with a grunt that Javert cannot help but echo. Soon he has to use both hands, half kneeling beside his horse as he strokes him; soon his hands are slippery and dripping, and then Gymont bugles like a trumpet, like something half-human, and his seed splashes over Javert's hands and wrists in thick bursts.

The feel of it is too much; it overwhelms him before he even lowers his arms, before he can even think of pressing a hand to his cock, much less undoing his trousers. He falls back onto his heels, wet hands tangled in the grass, back arching against nothing and blood roaring in his ears as his vision goes finally, mercifully black.

When it passes it leaves him weak and shaken. He wipes his hands on the ground as best he can and staggers to his feet; his trousers cling wetly to his thigh in impotent echo of the wide splash across the grass before him.

But Gymont is still there, has not run away, has not left him despite this obscene thing Javert has done. Without thinking, Javert reaches out for him and Gymont leans, solid and warm, into his touch.


	2. and Hell followed with him

4\. a pale horse

He cannot arrest Valjean; so much is obvious. He cannot release 24601.

Javert stands on the knife-edge of impossibility, with hell on either side of him, feeling it cut deeper and deeper the longer he walks it, the longer he stands at the stairs watching after Valjean's disappearing back. The rain puddles in the street hide the filth of his footprints and still Javert watches, as if he is in truth the hound of the law and so small a thing as sight means nothing to his ability to follow the trail.

At last he takes his eyes from the street and looks up; the bridge beside him rears high and proud over the swollen river and for a moment Javert thinks that this is the story of his life written short: he will climb, struggling with every slippery step until he has come as high as he can, and then in an instant he will fall.

Javert has taken the first step when he hears a deep whinny from the street and remembers Gymont, tied by his reins to a hitching-post. It will not do, he tells himself, to leave Gymont there; to make Gymont wait for a master who will never return, to abandon him to whatever scum of the street think to make off with him first.

No. Before he can settle this last score, there are others to be paid. Javert looks one last time at the bridge, shaken by the terrible longing he feels, and turns resolutely away. He means only to return Gymont to the stable; perhaps then to write a note of resignation, an explanation to his landlord; such few small worldly matters are all that remain. But he reaches the street and he does not turn Gymont aside. Soon they have passed, as well, the Palais de Justice and the street that leads to his small apartment. Still Javert rides on.

Gymont carries him uncomplainingly through the night; if the stallion wonders that they are leaving Paris on an early summer's night instead of a spring morning, Javert does not know and has no way of knowing. Nor could he say _why_ , had Gymont any way to ask. He has never run from law or justice in his life: he has always done what he must, done his duty. And yet now he runs, knowing with every quick hoofbeat that he cannot outrun his failure: this is a longer path, yet he will fall in the end even as he would have had he climbed the Pont-au-Change.

It is not yet dawn when Gymont slows and halts unbidden and Javert startles out of his dark thoughts and looks up. In the darkness they have reached the same abandoned field they come to each year; the grass is thicker than he remembers it, tall and tufted with two months' long growth, the trees fully-leafed. He had not meant to come here.

When he does not make a move to continue onwards, Gymont turns aside, off the road, and wanders unguided through the field to the shorter, softer grass beneath the squat branches of an old tree. Javert drops the reins; Gymont halts again, this time turning his head curiously to look at him. He reaches out and sets his hand on Gymont's nose. His breath comes in deep draws from the long run, filling Javert's palm with hot damp air.

He dismounts, sliding from the saddle but leaving his arms atop it, leaning most of his weight against his horse so that his own feet, still slashed by the edge of indecision, do not have to bear it themselves.

"Gymont," he says, his hand straying from leather to Gymont's wither. Wet foam is beginning to stand out on his coat, white on dark visible in even this starless sky. "I have done wrong by you, too." He should not have ridden so hard, so fast, so far, fleeing these impossible demons in an unwinnable race. With unsure hands he loosens the buckles of girth and saddle, lifts the tack free, drops it carelessly on the ground. He will not need it again.

Gymont takes a step away - Javert nearly falls at the sudden lack of support - but it is only to nose curiously at the sweat-dampened leather. Javert has never before been so cavalier with his tack.

"Everything is changed," he tells him, and Gymont pricks his ears up to listen as he always does, swings his head back around, nosing at Javert's chest. Tonight - today Javert has no apples. "I'm sorry." He is sorry. He has always been sorry; it changes nothing. He puts his hands on the wide sweep of Gymont's cheeks, strokes sleek fur with his thumbs, then unclasps the throatlatch and slides the bridle off as well. It joins the saddle in the pile on the ground.

Gymont slides his head over Javert's shoulder while his back is turned; Javert leans back heavily against his chest. If he leaves this field alive, he will leave it not only as a man who hides fugitives from justice but also a thief in his own right, having stolen a horse. He thinks unwillingly of Valjean's protestations, so many years ago: _I stole only a loaf of bread!_ He had been right; Javert had been wrong. Had always been wrong, as Valjean had found fit to remind him.

And in the end it has taken Valjean to show him the answer to that question he asked so many years ago in this very place: What kind of man is Javert? No kind at all; he is worse even than the beasts who had once been under his tender care. He is a nothing. He had fallen long ago; has been falling all this time and only now is he in sight of the end.

Gymont has shown he knows the road to Paris; when Javert is dead he will, unsaddled and untied, find his way back to his stable and they will recognize him. He strokes the thick corded muscle of Gymont's neck, sweeping the foam from him, grooming him as best he can with only his bare hands. "There," he says softly, when Gymont shudders, shaking away the loosened sweat, and pushes the horse aside gently until he steps back a few paces and begins to crop hungrily at grass and clover.

Javert turns his hands to the buttons of his own uniform now, folding it with respectful care and setting it down atop a wide, waist-high branch of the nearby tree. When he stands again he is naked underneath the bleak sky. It seems that dawn will never come - but then, this is not something the sun should look on.

When Javert closes his eyes he cannot remember his dream despite the years it has tormented him; he tries to call the quick fiery flash of a copper tail to his mind but sees only darkness. Perhaps this is a sign that it is time, he thinks; perhaps mares do not remember their dreams. He crosses the few feet to where Gymont is grazing and touches him again, along the long plane of his back to his hip, down his flank. His head feels curiously light, now, as if in realizing the truth of himself the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders and set aside; it is without fear and without shame that he strokes Gymont to full readiness and then leads him back to the tree.

At first it seems Gymont does not know what to do; this is not a thing Javert has ever asked of him before. He snorts, half rears; Javert strokes him gently again: his fine, fierce neck, his hard, eager cock. His hands come away wet and and slick and he bends across the branch, smears it over himself, uses it to ease the way of his fingers. Behind him he hears Gymont pacing impatiently, almost a dance; hears him give that wide-mouthed, shuddering teeth-baring snort. "Up, Gymont!" he says.

And Gymont, ever obedient, ever steady, lunges up, his forelegs clattering at the branch, his cock thrusting fruitlessly against Javert. He neighs in frustration that sounds almost like anger and lunges forwards again; this time the head of his cock catches at the rim of Javert's too-tight hole, sinks in just an inch at first and then thrusts far deeper.

Javert does not say _God_ , has long since lost the right; he cries out wordlessly as he is pierced, impaled. The cold hollow inside of him where he had once thought his soul to be is ripped out by the plunging thrusts of the stallion above him, replaced with an incredible, burning agony. Something tears within him and he embraces the pain, holds it close even as he chokes and sobs uncontrollably: even Hellfire is better than the lonely, freezing dark.

It does not take long. Gymont neighs sharply again, slams him so hard against the tree branch Javert is sure for an instant that it will break along with him, and then withdraws with a rush, scrambling back to all fours. Pain sings through Javert's body like the roaring of a river; he barely feels the flood of come and blood soaking down his thighs, though he smells it and worse.

He cannot stand; when he pushes back off the tree, he collapses in its roots with a gasping whimper and the darkness nearly claims him. "Go home, Gymont," he says. "Go!" His tongue is too thick in his mouth, his voice weak. Beasts do not speak. Mares cannot talk.

Gymont does not go no matter how Javert raves at him; he stays unmoving until the clouds at the horizon finally give way to the first light of dawn. Then, as if suddenly spooked despite all his training, he shies away, his hooves thudding across the grass until they find the hard wet dirt of the road.

At the sound, Javert forces his failing eyes open to a world that is no longer black but dull with mist. The horse that stands sentinel above him is no longer dark with shadow; it is not sorrel nor dapple-grey. Nevertheless, it is, he thinks, the only horse a man like him has ever truly been meant to ride.


End file.
